A content inventory is a spreadsheet or database listing every piece of content on a site, one row per URL, with descriptive attributes such as title, type, author, publish date, topic and status. It answers the question "what do we actually have?" before anyone decides what to write next or what to fix. Most sites have more pages than their teams realize, especially across blogs, docs, landing pages and old campaign microsites.
How to build one
Combine several sources, because no single one is complete. Export URLs from the CMS, crawl the site, pull the XML sitemaps and add every URL with impressions in Google Search Console. Pages that appear in Search Console but not in the crawl are often orphans or leftovers from old campaigns.
- URL and status code
- Title and H1
- Content type: blog post, guide, landing page, docs, case study
- Topic or pillar
- Author and owner
- Publish and last-updated dates
- Indexability: canonical, noindex, robots rules
Keeping it current
An inventory starts going stale the day it is finished. Teams with a lot of content often generate it automatically on a schedule from the CMS and a crawler, so that the audit and planning work always starts from current data.
Assign an owner to each section of the site. When someone leaves, their pages should not become nobody's responsibility.
Example
Finding the forgotten pages
Hypothetical company Brinkvale assumes it has about 300 marketing pages. Its inventory, built from a CMS export, a crawl and Search Console data, finds closer to 700, including old webinar landing pages, a retired partner portal and duplicate pricing pages from past tests. Several still receive impressions and show outdated prices.
Common mistakes
Relying on the CMS alone
Pages created outside the CMS, on subdomains or by other teams, will be missing. Crawl and Search Console data fill the gaps.
Recording too many columns
An inventory with fifty columns never gets finished. Capture what you need for the next decision and add more later.
Questions
A site with a few dozen pages can manage without a formal one, but the habit pays off quickly as the site grows past what anyone can remember.
